Okay so Murder Drones Episode 7 clarified a lot about what's going on, and I think I now mostly understand The Plot. Pulling my thoughts together into a rough timeline (warning, this is looong, major spoilers obv):
The setting:
Humanity is in the space age, having colonized other planets like Copper 9.
The company "JCJenson IN SPAAAAACEE!!!!" appears to have invented sentient robots, called worker drones.
Worker drones have no rights and are treated poorly.
Worker drones have a known "bug": if a dead worker drone's core is left alone in the body, it has a ~0.01% chance of coming back to life (a "zombie drone").
JCJenson has a fix for this, called "wdOS_606" (assumed to stand for "Worker Drone Operating System 606"). It's installed in dead worker drones to prevent reanimation, but in some cases the dead body can "reject" the update (even after lying dormant for up to five years!) so users are instructed to remove the core and destroy the body, too.
If a drone does reanimate, there's 70.3% chance that everything is fine and the drone is just alive again, a 29% chance of undergoing "terminal lockout", and a 0.7% chance to reboot with "potentially hazardous mutations".
So if you do absolutely everything wrong, there's a ~0.00007% chance of "potentially hazardous mutations".
That's probably fine.
The backstory:
Someone does absolutely everything wrong. An improperly discarded worker drone awakes in a mass grave of other drones.
This drone is recovered by Tessa James Elliott, heir to the Elliott fortune, who names her "Cyn".
Tessa has a fascination with worker drones, treating them like people and dressing them up as butlers and maids (much to her parents' annoyance). In addition to Cyn, she has three other worker drone rescues, who she has named "N", "V", and "J".
Unbeknownst to Tessa and the other drones, Cyn is one of those 0.00007%. She has a something called "Absolute Solver".
Exactly how much of the original Cyn is left in there is unclear. Exactly what Absolute Solver is is also unclear. (Personal theory: JCJenson didn't actually invent sentient AI. They found some eldritch alien technology, reverse engineered it, locked the original programming down under a giant pile of safeguards, and referred to it as "potentially hazardous mutations" in the user manual. But that's just speculation.)
Whatever it is, Absolute Solver is obscenely powerful and dangerous. It can manipulate objects telekinetically with extreme force and precision, regenerate from virtually any injury, project expansive life-like holograms, generate massive bio-mechanical extensions to its body and surroundings, and create "null" zones capable of shattering a planet with the correct placement.
During this time J and Tessa regularly keep Cyn locked in the manor's basement at the request of Tessa's mother, who finds her disturbing.
Absolute Solver / Cyn spreads itself into N, V, and J without their knowledge and spends its time cloning and experimenting on them down there, wiping their memories to prevent them from noticing.
Eventually, Absolute Solver / Cyn attacks a gala the Elliotts are holding, killing most or all of the guests and taking full control of N, V, and J.
Either at the gala or later, Absolute Solver / Cyn takes Tessa's body. It's not entirely clear whether AS killed Tessa and is wearing her body like a suit, or whether Tessa is still "alive" in some way (which would be even worse IMO).
Absolute Solver fully mutates N, V, and J into their murder drone forms, cloning them and using them as soldiers in the genocide of Earth. Their original minds are mostly suppressed during this time.
Earth is eventually fully destroyed, presumably by nuking its core with a null zone, and the wave of "disassembly drones" starts spreading out to other colonized planets.
The common worker drones on Copper 9 apparently never find out about any of this?
As the wave closes in, the JCJenson outpost on Copper 9 starts doing secret experiments on worker drones that are infected with Absolute Solver, under the code name "Cabin Fever".
For safety, the scientists stock the underground labs with anti-drone sentinels, raptor-like robots programmed to freeze and destroy worker drones.
Some of the worker drones they experiment on never gain any powers. The ones that do eventually become corrupted by Absolute Solver / Cyn and have to be put down. By the time of the final experiment, only two successful experiments remain: 002 Nori (Uzi's mom) and 048 Yeva (Doll's mom).
The scientists manage to develop a patch that can suppress Absolute Solver's influence. The patch is successfully installed into Yeva, but Nori has already been corrupted by Absolute Solver by this point. The scientists frantically struggle to install the patch into her as well.
During this final procedure, for reasons unknown, the intended lead scientist Dr. Chambers never shows up. His hazard suit and name tag are mistakenly taken by Mitchel, the world's unluckiest intern.
Absolute Solver / Nori is rampaging out of control. Dr. Ridley hopes that Yeva can subdue her with her powers, and due to the mix-up sends Mitchel to fetch her.
While Mitchel is gone Absolute Solver / Nori kills everyone in the cathedral lab (except for Dr. Ridley), gets rid of the sentinels, and projects a hologram to disguise the killing.
Mitchel returns with Yeva, but finds the situation seemingly under control and the patch already installed into Nori. He wasn't sure what he was supposed to do with Yeva in the first place, so with the danger apparently passed he leaves her outside and claims he never found her.
Mitchel leans down to pick up what he assumes is a spare copy of the patch (it's actually the original), and freezes as he spots Dr. Ridley hiding silently behind a pew. Absolute Solver / Nori kills Dr. Ridley and drops the hologram, then flings the patch USB at Mitchel's face to kill him too.
Yeva catches the USB before it hits him, having followed him inside, although the sheer wind force shatters Mitchel's visor and breaks his suit camera. She flings the USB back at Nori, successfully "plugging" it into her at last.
Before being fully suppressed, Absolute Solver throws the USB down a giant hole and generates a null zone in Nori's hand. Yeva slices the hand off and lets it fall into the hole, too. The null zone explodes, partially shattering the planet and killing all human life (rip Mitchel).
Nori and Yeva escape to the surface and join the newly forming worker drone society. One of the failed experimentees, Alice, remains below and begins scavenging parts from worker drones that have been killed by the roaming sentinels.
Nori and Yeva have children (however that works), Uzi and Doll respectively. Although it is not yet obvious, their children inherit the suppressed Absolute Solver.
The main Absolute Solver / Cyn construct was watching these events from Earth to the best of its ability. Faced with the threat of other drones that share its powers but are not under its control, it reprograms N, V, and J to wipe out all the worker drones on Copper 9.
Under the reprogramming, they mostly regain their original personalities (seemingly due to a twisted sense of sentimentality-slash-sadism) but are given false memories of being built by JCJenson to suppress the worker drone uprising.
Their abilities are "nerfed" to prevent them becoming a threat to Absolute Solver. This may be why they need to consume worker drone oil so frequently, although Uzi and Doll have that urge too. Their ship is also intentionally crash landed to prevent them from returning, and the radio is removed to prevent them discovering the truth.
It's possible that J's reprogramming was different, as she "was getting orders from someone."
In one of their early attacks, the disassembly drones "kill" Nori, but she manages to survive and escape as a core using her Absolute Solver powers. She returns to the underground lab to search for the dropped USB, never telling Khan she's alive. Presumably her goal is to use the patch to stop Absolute Solver / Cyn and the disassembly drones.
V also kills Yeva and her husband, apparently for good. The trauma awakens Doll's Absolute Solver powers.
Khan builds the doors to hide the remaining worker drones from the disassembly drones.
With her powers awakened, Doll needs to consume oil. She begins secretly killing her classmates to survive and training her powers so she can avenge her parents by killing V. Lizzy finds out and fully supports her friend's serial killing / revenge plan.
The present:
Uzi manages to befriend N, leading him to start questioning the corporate propaganda he's been reprogrammed with.
Uzi and N fight V and J. J is seemingly killed, and N confines V to the ship. In reality J's Absolute Solver awakens and takes control of her body, now reduced to a core. V could escape if she chose, but refrains for now, seemingly conflicted.
Uzi's Absolute Solver powers begin to awaken.
Absolute Solver / J stalks and kills several worker drones using holograms, seemingly for materials to construct a new body. N and Uzi fight and eventually defeat it. N repeatedly stabs its core with his nanite acid, collapsing it into a small void that drifts away. It's not entirely clear whether it's dead or not.
Offscreen, Lizzy starts hanging out with V? In the ship, I guess?? and forms a semi-sorta friendship with her. Her intention seems to have been to mention prom, so that V would get the idea to go there for murder and Doll could kill her. (The Promening is kind of a dense and confusing episode and several characters have less than clear motivations.)
Uzi begins to notice the disappearances caused by Doll's killings, but is prevented from investigating by Khan, who attempts to distract her from all that creepy stuff with prom.
Doll attempts to isolate and kill Uzi, with Lizzy's support. Uzi finds the bodies of Doll's previous victims and escapes. Lizzy goes to let V inside.
V escapes from the ship and heads to prom with the intention of killing everyone. N follows to stop her, joined by Uzi.
Doll crowns herself the prom queen, having murdered all the other candidates. I have no earthly idea why she did this, other than that the murderous psychic girl was crowned prom queen in Carrie (for different reasons) and this episode is a light Carrie reference.
V descends on the prom with murderous intent, but is suddenly distracted by the prospect of becoming prom queen. Lizzy declares that V is her friend and peer pressures the other students into forgiving V and declaring her prom queen. Lizzy eventually decides that V is "hotter than Doll" and warns her to run just as Doll attacks.
Doll and V fight, killing tons of students nobody cares about. Uzi and N enter the fray, finding themselves defending V instead of stopping her.
Doll and Uzi both attempt to convince the other to join them in taking revenge on / working with the disassembly drones, without success.
Lizzy helps V, cementing their weird semi-friendship.
Doll discovers that Uzi also has Absolute Solver powers and says she's sorry for her. She escapes, saying she's going to search for a cure and promising to help Uzi if she does.
Uzi's oil cravings begin to get worse.
Absolute Solver / Cyn / Tessa (who I will now call Skyn) arrives on Copper 9 to finish the job her disassembly drones couldn't. She is accompanied by a J clone. Their cover story is that Tessa is working for JCJenson to stop Absolute Solver. It's not yet clear whether this J is aware of the truth or has false memories.
At some point, Skyn and J meet with Doll and give her some information about operation Cabin Fever. Doll agrees to find the key they need to get into the underground labs if they take her with them.
Doll travels to Camp 98.7, a former facility used in the Cabin Fever experiments, to find the key. N and Uzi follow her there to try and figure out what's going on. They bring V and all Uzi's surviving classmates too because why not.
Uzi finds a green robot-bug which has the keycodes, though she doesn't know this yet. N finds a VHS tape describing zombie drones.
Uzi's corruption gets worse. She loses control and kills several of her classmates. V fights Uzi, addressing her as "Cyn", but N manages to calm her down.
N has been recovering partial memories of his time in Elliott Manor, and while at a not-sleepover at Uzi's he and V collapse as their reprogramming tries to delete those memories, pulling them into a memory of the night of the gala. Interestingly, their screens display "Error: 606" during this time, suggesting a connection to "Worker Drone Operating System 606", the operating system intended to prevent zombie drones.
Uzi hacks into N and V's brains to protect their minds and to recover the memories in full. As she's doing this, Doll breaks into Uzi's home and steals the key-bug. Torn between saving her friends and letting the one clue she's found slip away, Uzi decides to help N and V.
Uzi helps N and V successfully recover their memories of the gala. Uzi sets herself as their system admin to prevent further tampering.
They follow Doll to her rendezvous with Skyn and J, shocking everyone. While Skyn (pretending to be Tessa) explains her cover story, Doll runs off with the key and ducks into the office complex leading to the lab.
Everyone else follows her, fending off sentinels and Alice, that ex-experimentee, along the way. Skyn tells N that Uzi is infected and must be killed for the good of the universe, a half-truth meant to drive a wedge between them as Skyn A) is the Absolute Solver, and B) knows about the patch. Alice is killed by sentinels.
One sentinel manages to wound Skyn and goes berserk, probably due to the paradox of a creature that is both human and worker drone.
They find Doll seemingly frozen by the sentinels, but it's a trap. Doll uses the key to summon an elevator down to the labs, opening her own way and leaving them cut off, surrounded by sentinels. V sacrifices herself to let them escape.
Down in the labs, Skyn continue to push Uzi away from N, freaking Uzi out and leading her to accidentally collapse the tunnel, separating all three of them.
With "Tessa" missing, Skyn returns to her Cyn form and torments N with illusions of V, dragging him away to be eaten. He is saved by Nori, who in an amazing coincidence has just today found that patch USB she's spent all these years searching for.
Uzi finds Mitchel's suit cam recordings of the final experiment, seeing her mother horrifically possessed by the Absolute Solver but not the moment when she was cured.
Returning to her Skyn-suit, Skyn accesses and deletes all the Cabin Fever team's notes, while J destroys the disassembly drones' ship on the surface, leaving Skyn and J's ship as the only way off the planet.
Skyn is confronted by Doll, who demands to know where the patch USB is, determined not to let Absolute Solver use her to destroy the planet (which was never actually its plan). Skyn does a funny Five Nights at Freddy's reference and fatally wounds her.
Nori catches N up on her backstory and the two try to figure out whether Doll or Uzi was the Absolute Solver that just attacked them, unaware of Skyn. Nori makes N promise not to tell Uzi that she's her mother.
Doll, bleeding heavily (a thing she can do thanks to Absolute Solver!) approaches Uzi and collapses. Skyn, re-disguised as Tessa (I swear she does like five costume changes in this episode she's so extra), follows Doll in and tries to kill Uzi, who is having the worst day of her life and is in no mental state to fight back.
N stops her and, determining that she did know about the patch and wanted to kill Uzi anyway, decapitates "Tessa". He tries to give the patch to Uzi, but she's already succumbed to Absolute Solver and destroys it.
N and Nori fight Absolute Solver / Cyn / Uzi. The fight goes poorly, and Absolute Solver / Uzi almost manages to eat Nori before N executes a flawless collective-embarrassment-jutsu, snapping Uzi out of it, but causing her to toss Nori into the giant pit. N spills the beans about Nori and both of them freak out in each other's arms.
Skyn finally reveals herself, devouring Doll's still-living core and beginning to yank Uzi and N into the pit as she prepares to detonate Copper 9's core just like Earth's and kill every remaining threat to her expansion.
J gets hit by a bus, loses her car keys, and is accosted by teens.
Uzi sacrifices herself to toss N the keys and get him out of there.
Uzi is pulled into the pit and somehow ends up in space, looking down at a big hole in Copper 9? Presumably the next episode will clear up what's going on here.
Which brings us up to the present.
97 notes
·
View notes
The Shadohunter Chronicles Character Showdown
First Round, Second Round
Rosemary Herondale vs Arthur Blackthorn, (Feb 23)
Celine Montclaire vs Diego Rocio-Rosales, (Feb 24)
Maureen Brown vs Anna Lightwood, (Feb 25)
Christopher Lightwood vs Ragnor Fell, (Feb 26)
Julian Blackthorn vs Livvy Blackthorn, (Feb 27)
Bridget Daly vs Jon Cartwright, (Feb 28)
Nate Grey vs Sona Carstairs, (Feb 29)
Gabriel Lightwood vs Madeleine Bellefleur, (Mar 1)
Paige Ashdown vs Rupert Blackthorn, (Mar 2)
Valentine Morgenstern vs Kraig, (Mar 3)
Andrew Blackthorn vs Irene, (Mar 4)
Axel Mortmain vs Thais Pedroso, (Mar 5)
Kit Herondale vs Ke Yi Tian, (Mar 6)
The Dark Sisters vs Filomina di Angelo, (Mar 7)
Lucie Herondale vs Simon Lovelace-Lewis, (Mar 8)
Shiyun Jung vs Cameron Ashdown, (Mar 9)
Elias Carstairs vs Tavvy Blackthorn, (Mar 10)
Luke Greymark vs Will Herondale, (Mar 11)
Ash Morgenstern vs Matthew Fairchild, (Mar 12)
Sophie Collins vs Jaime Rocio-Rosales, (Mar 13)
Catarina Loss vs Tessa Grey, (Mar 14)
Jessamine Lovelace vs Woolsey Scott, (Mar 15)
Diana Wrayburn vs Magnus Lightwood-Bane, (Mar 16)
James Herondale vs Jesse Blackthorn, (Mar 17)
Sebastian Morgesnstern vs Ty Blackthorn, (Mar 18)
Julie Beavul vs Tatiana Lightwood, (Mar 19)
Meliorn vs Helen Blackthorn, (Mar 20)
Alexander Lightwood vs Arawn, (Mar 21)
Jace Lightwood-Herondale vs Michael Wayland, (Mar 22)
Raphael Santiago vs Kieran Kingson, (Mar 23)
Marisol Garza vs Hypatia Vex, (Mar 24)
Dru Blackthorn vs Ari Bridgstock, (Mar 25)
Eugenia Lightwood vs Bat Velasquez, (Mar 26)
Eliza Rosewain vs Rafael Lightwood-Bane, (Mar 27)
Anush Joshi vs Seelie Queen, (Mar 28)
Church vs Cecily Herondale, (Mar 29)
Annabel Blackthorn vs Robert Lightwood, (Mar 30)
Beatriz Mendoza vs Malcolm Fade, (Mar 31)
Jocelyn Fairchild vs Max Lightwood-Bane, (Apr 1)
Imogen Whitlaw vs Jem Carstairs, (Apr 2)
Mother Hawthorn vs Chairman Meow, (Apr 3)
Manuel Casales-Villalobos vs Barbra Lightwood, (Apr 4)
Cordelia Carstairs vs Benedict Lightwood, (Apr 5)
Divya Joshi vs Lily Chen, (Apr 6)
Patrick Penhallow vs Alastair Carstairs, (Apr 7)
Isabelle Lightwood vs Mark Blackthorn, (Apr 8)
Amatis Greymark vs George Lovelace, (Apr 9)
Maryse Lightwood vs Elliott, (Apr 10)
Alexei de Quincey vs Elyas the Demon, (Apr 11)
Hodge Starkweather vs Henry Branwell, (Apr 12)
Camille Belcourt vs Auraline, (Apr 13)
Aline Penhallow vs Roland Loss, (Apr 14)
Johny Rook vs Stephen Herondale, (Apr 15)
Rayan Maduabuchi vs Alec Lightwood-Bane, (Apr 16)
Esme Hardcastle vs Jordan Kyle, (Apr 17)
Grace Blackthorn vs Evelyn Highsmith, (Apr 18)
Jia Penhallow vs Charles Fairchild, (Apr 19)
Horace Dearborn vs Max Lightwood, (Apr 20)
Emma Carstairs vs Mina Carstairs, (Apr 21)
Charlotte Fairchild vs Aloysius Starkweather, (Apr 22)
Janus Herondale vs Zachary Carstairs, (Apr 23)
Gwyn ap Nudd vs Clary Fairchild, (Apr 24)
Maia Roberts vs Gideon Lightwood, (Apr 25)
Thomas Lightwood vs Cristina Mendoza-Rosales, (Apr 26)
31 notes
·
View notes